President Donald Trump is finally losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s disdain for honorable efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
On Memorial Day, Trump responded to a weekend of extreme Russian attacks on cities across Ukraine by threatening new sanctions. He said Putin had “gone absolutely crazy.” On May 27, he added a threat, saying only his tolerance of Putin has prevented “lots of really bad things” from happening to Russia. Putin, Trump added, “was playing with fire!”
Trump must now choose between one of two ways forward. His first option is to yield to Putin’s gamesmanship and withdraw from the peace process. His second choice is to use U.S. power to turn Putin toward peace. Trump should take the latter option. The greatest levers of U.S. power have not yet been used, and the pursuit of peace is honorable and necessary.
The war in Ukraine has raged for nearly 3 1/2 years. It is the biggest and bloodiest war in Europe since 1945. This Memorial Day was a fitting date for Trump’s recognition of Putin’s aggression. As Trump’s Ukraine special envoy Keith Kellogg observed on May 27, the war has seen “industrial-strength killing, when you’ve got casualties on both sides that are over 1 million and right now, conservatively, about 1.2 million.”
What next?
To start, Trump must recognize that he must show strength. That’s all Putin’s political psyche understands. Putin has talked pleasantly on the phone and face to face with Trump but has otherwise regularly belittled Trump and particularly enjoys painting him as a childish fool.
One such example was Putin’s Shakespearean insult, “Tennis balls, my liege,” to Trump at their 2018 Helsinki summit. Another was Putin’s recent decision to hold a supposedly critical phone call with Trump from a high school. Putin’s disdain for Trump’s peace agenda has always been visible just below the diplomatic surface, evidenced by the missile onslaughts that slam into Ukrainian cities shortly after phone calls between the two leaders. There are also one-fingered salutes, such as Putin’s recent deployment of his assassination-prone GRU military intelligence service director to peace talks in Istanbul. Putin is a master of the theater of manipulation. When it comes to Ukraine, he arrogantly assumes that Trump will bow to him even though he has less power and will not, instead, exploit Putin’s several vulnerabilities.
However, Trump is also an expert in the theatrics of power politics, and he should teach Putin a lesson he will understand.
Trump has long sought a 30-day ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. He compelled Ukraine’s support for that ceasefire nearly two months ago by suspending arms and intelligence support for Kyiv. However, Putin still stands against that path to peace because he believes Trump will not force him to do otherwise. That’s Trump’s fault because he has given Putin no reason to cease prevarication and deception. Trump should act decisively and impose fierce sanctions on Moscow.
He should support secondary sanctions on Russia’s key energy customers: China, India, and, absurdly, U.S. NATO ally Turkey. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has a ready bill with massive bipartisan support. It would impose 500% tariffs on any nation that imports Russian oil or gas. It would force nations to choose between harming their economies and finding alternative energy supplies at slightly higher prices. As Trump proved in economic showdowns with Turkey in his first term, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will blink under U.S. economic pressure. India would likely do the same. Even China might follow suit for fear of being forced to defend its continued support for Russia’s war economy, even as it seeks to bolster ties with the European Union.
Losing those export markets would put immediate strain on Russia’s economy, which is creaking after years of military spending, high inflation, a skilled labor shortage, and collapsing private investment. Without energy exports, Russia has no viable way of generating foreign capital. Government revenues would implode. Putin would be forced to choose either painful cuts to domestic social services or big tax hikes. He might well do these things rather than come to the table. But it would become difficult for him to continue his war of aggression even as his forces earned only limited territorial gains at a consistently heavy cost to manpower and materiel.
This speaks to another truth that Trump should recognize: Russia’s military power is far greater than that of Ukraine, and the Russian armed forces have shown an extraordinary inability to conduct successful combined arms offensives.
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The energy sanctions would allow Trump to show Putin that he has greater global power and strategic initiative. This may lead to growing U.S.-Russia tensions. For example, Putin might seek to escalate his nuclear threats. But even then, Trump can have confidence that Putin is neither a fool nor a lunatic. Where the United States would survive a nuclear war with Russia, U.S. Strategic Command would ensure that Russia became a wasteland. Putin knows it.
Trump has the cards to negotiate a deal for the ages. He needs only to play them.